Subscribe to this blog

Follow by Email

Search This Blog

Posts

The axis mundi, also known as the cosmic axis, world axis, or the center of the world, is a symbol representing the center of the world - a place where the heaven touches the earth.

In different cultures axis mundi was represented by various naturally occurring landscape features such as mountains, trees, stalks, columns of smoke. Man-made objects such as staffs, towers, ladders, staircases, maypoles, crosses, totem poles, pillars, or spires also functioned as a symbolic axis mundi.
The axis mundi takes a prominent place in shamanic cultures and in animist belief systems, but it also appears in the most technologically advanced cultures whenever there is an impulse to link an architectural structure with the idea of the center of the world.
Throughout the history, most cultures regarded their own territory as the center of the entire world. Within this territory a spot symbolizing the axis mundi was designated as a place of worship and veneration. Typically, high mountains were co…

There are times when it is hard to believe in the future, when we are temporarily just not brave enough. When this happens, concentrate on the present. Cultivate le petit bonheur - the little happiness - until courage returns. Look forward to the beauty of the next moment, the next hour, the promise of a good meal, sleep, a book, a movie, the likelihood that tonight the stars will shine and tomorrow the sun will rise. Sink roots into the present until the strength grows to think about tomorrow. - Ardis Whitman, American Author

To abide in awareness without asserting our need to control what is arising suggests a complete restructuring of our view and intention. The eighth-century Indian Buddhist scholar Shantideva said, “We are not here to change the world; the world is here to change us.” This is the level of reorganization necessary for moving a self-based paradigm into abiding awareness. When we attempt to force or influence reality, we are refusing to be affected by it. We have opted out of changing ourselves, investing our energy in the course of our desire. The sense of self remains fully empowered when it decides how the world must change to fit its needs, and nothing can get through to modify the mind, because it is externally focused. Suddenly the paradigm shifts when the mind starts accommodating reality and is modified by the facts. - Rodeny Smith